The political vandalism of John Turmel got just a few lines in my report on Thursday night’s candidates’ debate in Ottawa-Vanier but the extent of the awfulness he visited on the political process deserves a little more attention.

A bunch of community associations and similar groups got together to rent the Knights of Columbus hall on McArthur and invited the candidates for the four biggest parties in the Ottawa-Vanier byelection to come represent themselves. There are 11 registered candidates, including Turmel (of the “Paupers’ Party”) and a guy who’s legally changed his name to Above Znoneofthe, so as to have his name appear at the bottoms of ballots.

Neither Turmel nor Znoneofthe was invited to the debate. Both showed up and took chairs up onto the stage in the hall, demanding their right to participate.

Philippe Marcoux, the graceful Radio-Canada host moderating the debate, wasn’t sure what to do at first. He wasn’t an organizer. Should he give these guys time?

People from the organizing groups conferenced briefly and decided no, Turmel and Znoneofthe hadn’t been invited and they wouldn’t get a sixth of the two-hour debate each to do whatever they wanted.

Turmel flipped out.

“I’ve got a right to be here. I’ve paid my money. I’m staying,” he said.

He has a lot of experience flipping out, because he has a lot of experience running for offices all across the land, not being invited to debates, and crashing them. The organizers thought they might work around the crashers, letting them stay on stage but not directing any questions to them. That lasted until the four top candidates had made short opening statements and then, in sequence going along the table, it would have been Turmel’s turn.

He leaped to his feet and started yelling about his rights. The crowd booed him. He wasn’t having it.

“You gotta bring a cop!” he shouted at one point. “Trespassing’s not an indictable offence!”

Turmel’s really expert at this kind of disruption. An indictable offence — murder, for instance — is something citizens can take action on themselves, if they see it going down. If you see someone kill someone, and you’re in a position to act, you can tackle the bad guy and hold him down until the police arrive. Trespassing isn’t like that: it’s a less serious crime and that means you have to call the police to come deal with it.

In this case, it took the police about 15 minutes to arrive. Turmel spent the time snarling and spitting at anyone who tried to talk to him. An organizer approached him on the stage and I couldn’t catch everything he said over the din but he addressed her, dismissively, as “Sweetie.”

Znoneofthe sat quietly while this all was going on. He left peacefully along with Turmel, once the police came to ask them to. The invited candidates had all left the stage. Some in the crowd had put on their coats and departed.

While this was all going on, a woman who runs a physiotherapy clinic came up to talk to me. Pamela Siekierski moved her business into Vanier and is troubled by some of what goes on on the streets there. She worked 12 hours on Thursday, then came to the meeting to hear what the candidates had to say about what they’d do in and for the neighbourhood. And then this “buffoon” comes along and disrupts it so nobody can get anything done.

Here’s the thing. A debate like this, though it has a public purpose, is not a public event. It’s organized by, well, the organizers, who pay for the costs out of their own money. They decide who’s invited. If they don’t invite a suitable number of candidates, people don’t come. If they invite too many — like 11 — people don’t come.

By the same lights, you don’t have a right to media coverage just because you put your name on a ballot. My own little algorithm for taking a candidate seriously is this:

Do you have evidence of achievement in some significant field of endeavour? (Previous experience in politics, in business, academia, the arts, all those count.)

Do you have significant policy proposals?

Do you have evidence of meaningful popular support?

Show two out of three and I’ll devote some energy to you. (If you manage the third without either of the first two, you’ll probably also get my attention, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a case where that happened.) I get to judge whether you’ve met the standard.

Is there a risk in that? Sure. I could get it wrong. But that’s part of my job every day, deciding what’s important enough to report on, because there’s only so much time in the day. If I’m wrong, I’ll be punished by readers for blowing it, for not having told them something important.

I don’t want to waste the audience’s time on candidates who are running on a lark, because they’re a bit nuts, because they have absolutely no idea what politics entails.

If you don’t like what the organizers have done, you can organize your own debate and invite whoever you want. You have a right to run; you don’t have a legally guaranteed right to anyone’s attention. That, you have to earn.

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